(Washington, D.C. ) – Ukrainian veterans of the Vietnam War passed a list of more than 200 incidents involving U.S. aircraft losses in Southeast Asia to John Rowan, Vietnam Veterans of America’s National President.

The list provides dates, times, the type of aircraft, and, in many cases, reported crash locations, prisoners taken, and number of aircrews killed. After correlating with publicly available data, VVA passed this list on to the U.S. government’s Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office in hopes that it may contain information to help account for some of the more than 1,800 U.S. servicemen still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

VVA’s Veterans Initiative Task Force (VITF), dedicated to achieving the fullest possible accounting of missing American service members, first traveled to Ukraine in November 2005. Since then, VVA and VITF have established a close relationship with the Ukrainian veterans. In May 2006 VVA and the Ukrainians signed a memorandum of understanding. Both sides pledged to work together to insure that no service member, living or dead, is ever left behind and that any recovered remains are returned with honor and dignity to his/her people.

During their visit to America, the Ukrainian veterans met with U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War, family members of missing American service members, representatives of the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).

This visit was made possible because of generous donations from the Buckeye Foundation, the Vietnam Veterans Peace Initiative, VVA’s Eastern New Jersey Chapter 779, Cincinnati Chapter 10, and the Cincinnati-Kharkiv Sister City Program established in 1989 between the cities of Cincinnati and Kharkiv, Ukraine.

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